


The Spirit that Denies

by Donna_Immaculata



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Consensual Violence, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Impact Play, Kink Meme, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:39:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in answer to the <a href="http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/2286.html?thread=3028718#cmt3028718">kink meme prompt</a>: <i>So we know that Aramis likes violence, what with him getting slapped a lot and smiling about getting hit and also him outright stating he likes violence, and then there was this scene in S1 where they were talking and Athos kind of agreed to hurt Aramis, saying "I'll punch you so hard you'll beg me to kick you". I reaaally want a fic that explores that and kind of.. expands on that.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Spirit that Denies

There is a lane on the way to Aramis’ lodgings that is so narrow two men can barely walk side by side. Aramis’ shoulder bumps into his and Athos’ arm comes up on its own accord. His hand alights on the back of Aramis’ neck, and even through the thick layer of leather he can feel how tense Aramis’ muscles are. He glances at him from the side. Aramis’ face is tense, too, his lips pressed together, and lines are etched deep into the corners of his mouth and eyes. Hurt is bleeding out of him; it tingles under Athos’ hand and up his arm, tiny pinpricks of energy that make his muscles twitch and his skin tauten. When they reach the house, Aramis opens the door wordlessly, and, just as wordlessly, Athos follows him inside. They walk down the dark hall and into the boudoir, and the door falls shut behind them.

Athos digs his fingers in, twirls Aramis around and rams his fist into Aramis’ stomach.

Aramis stumbles back against the wall, winded, gasping for breath, and Athos strides at him, pulls his head up by the hair and punches him again. When he lets go, Aramis falls to his knees with a loud thud. It’s impossible to see his face in the darkness. All Athos can discern is a pale sliver of skin beneath dark hair. He grabs him by the hair again, hard and vicious, and slaps him. It’s not a brutal slap, meant to sting rather than to hurt; meant to make Aramis whimper in the agony of shame. But he never does. Aramis will gasp for air, and he will pant with effort when it gets too much, but it is the pained moan that Athos longs for. He slaps him again, harder this time, to hear the sound his leather glove makes on Aramis’ skin. 

“Not that,” Aramis whispers hoarsely. Kneeling before Athos, he has bent his head as far as Athos’ grip permits. “Hit me. Do it properly.”

Athos groans. Cold white fury gushes through him, setting his blood aflame until it bubbles like pitch. Aramis uses his weakness against him. He wants to be hit, and he knows that Athos can’t help himself, not when he’s roused into this state of wrath. Aramis kneels before him like a penitent, and he should grant him absolution, but he cannot. Too heavy is the burden of mercy. The obligation of being just and merciful has been imposed on him through nobility and breeding, and his bones creak under its weight. Aramis knows. He has long sensed that dark desire in Athos: the red spark that lurks within his breast and that he never permits to erupt, not even in the heat of battle. Aramis knows about sin; he knows about the desire to sin again and again, to wallow in it, and to drown in it. He drinks it in like wine. Aramis permits himself to be led by own dark passions, and he permits Athos to be led by his.

“Take off your coat,” Athos says in a voice that’s low and steady and firm like a deadly strike of the sword. He waits, his arms hanging loosely by his sides, for Aramis to unbuckle and unwrap, and then the leather drops to the ground with an animal groan.

“The shirt?” Aramis asks. He has not lifted his head, has not looked at Athos, not yet. He will, later, and the force of his gaze will bring Athos down to his knees.

“No.” Sometimes he likes to see Aramis’ skin when he hits him, but not tonight. The linen of Aramis’ shirt falls in delicate folds over his shoulders and arms, concealing their bulk. All that’s left is the mere suggestion of contours, beautifully and fully rounded. Athos is driven by the desire to penetrate into Aramis’ flesh through this soft layer of fabric, to bring his body into subjection without touching him. Sometimes, he likes to take off his gloves and watch the marks that his fingers leave on Aramis’ skin. Sometimes, he rips off his glove and wraps his scarf around his hand instead, cushioning his knuckles against the impact when he punches into the side of Aramis’ face.

Not tonight. He leaves his gloves on and watches leather clash with linen when his fist makes contact with Aramis’ limbs and torso. He was scared, the first time they did that, scared of losing control; but as they have become accustomed to each other, to each other’s rhythm, they got a kind of mutual physical understanding. It is an act of liberation, for both of them, when Athos pummels into Aramis’ body in the exhilarating knowledge that Aramis won’t fight back, that his trust in Athos is so great and absolute that he permits him to violate his body like this. That the pain that shudders through him, from hand to shoulder, shudders through Aramis as well, and that every punch, every mark that he leaves on Aramis, strengthens the bond between them. Aramis is panting beneath him; even though he can’t see it in the darkness, Athos knows that Aramis’ chest and neck are slippery with sweat, just like his own. Its scent rises between them, almost corporeal in its intensity, and he can taste Aramis on his tongue even without even touching him. 

He uses his boots, too, and kicks against the inside of Aramis’ thigh, upsetting his equilibrium so that he drops to his hands and knees, and then he kicks into his ribs with the sole of his boot. Aramis raises himself back to his knees and looks up. There it is, that dark direct gaze that penetrates the mist in Athos’ head, and he sinks down and over Aramis and wrestles him to the ground, swiftly, rapturously, intent and mindless at last. 

“Fuck,” Aramis chokes out from between clenched teeth, and Athos wonders, not for the first time, if he always reacts with profanities when the intensity of physical experience gets too much. If his lovers tear those words from him, if a woman hears him spit out ‘fuck’ when he sleeps with her, or ‘cunt’.

If this is what he said to the Queen.

Athos wrangles down a groan and punches Aramis again, to the side of his jaw. Aramis’ body goes slack under his fist, and it slips sideways on the floorboards and stays on the ground, one arm flung out wide, and his chest heaving with painful, gasping breaths. The mad surge of power that has driven him into Aramis’ body abates slowly, leaving sparks of pleasure-pain in its wake that prickle under his skin. Athos is gasping too. Folded over Aramis, his prostrate body is melting into Aramis’ as bones and muscles relax. Every breath Aramis takes rocks him gently. They drift in a haze for the span of several heartbeats, and as both their breaths even out, fury and pain drain from Athos like bad humours after bleeding. The earth seems to tilt and sway, and he is sliding off and into endless darkness.

A powerful knocking brings him back to consciousness, like a hammer against the walls of the house. It is the hammer of Aramis’ heart, its throb potent and insistent beneath Athos’ ear. Aramis stirs, and then he sighs and lifts Athos’ hand to his mouth. He tugs at Athos’ glove with his teeth, pulling it off one finger after the other. Athos shivers when the cool night hair hits his bare skin. Apart from his face, his hand is now the only exposed part of his body. Unlike Aramis, whose dishevelled shirt seems hardly sufficient to protect his modesty. It gapes open over his neck and chest and has ridden up on his stomach. 

Once the glove is off, Aramis breathes a warm breath over his bruised knuckles, and Athos shivers again. Aramis buries the fingers of his other hand in Athos’ hair and pulls his head up, forcing him to meet his eyes as he moves Athos’ hand to the side of his face. His eyes are glittering like black puddles, and Athos bites the inside of his lip when his fingertips touch the spot on Aramis’ cheekbone where he knows a bruise is throbbing into life under his skin.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Athos says. “I can’t.”

“You can.” Aramis’ voice is very gentle. He is at his calmest in moments like this, as if all pain and tension had drained from him and all that is left is peace. He nestles his face into the palm of Athos’ hand. 

“Why-” Athos says without looking at him. “Why do you want me to do that?”

“Nobody else can.”

“Porthos-”

“Would never hit me.”

Athos turns his head and looks Aramis straight in the eye. “Why do you want to get hit?”

Aramis smirks. “I deserve it,” he says lightly. “You think so.”

Athos’ eyes flicker to the cross that has slipped into the hollow above Aramis’ collarbones. “Aramis-”

“No. Please.” Aramis covers the cross with his hand and slides it down his chest, under the folds of his shirt. “Don’t try to persuade me that I don’t. Don’t try to persuade yourself. It won’t work.”

“I can’t be around all the time to restrain you.”

“No. I know.”

“You’ve got to control yourself.”

“I can’t.” He laughs. “Really, Athos, I can’t. Sometimes I think-” It is he who breaks the eye contact this time, and he stares into distance. “It’s no good, you can’t reason with me. I can’t reason with myself.”

“You’re going to destroy yourself-”

Aramis looks back at him, sharp and insolent. “You would know.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It’s exactly the same. I can’t… stop.” His ribcage shudders beneath Athos’ body and he whispers: “I have to go there, you know that.”

“Aramis.” Athos bits the inside of his lip again at the sound of his own voice; his almost pleading tone. “You have got to keep away from the Dauphin. For everybody’s sake.”

“I know.” Aramis breathes in deeply. “I won’t.”

“You won’t go?”

“I won’t keep away.”

“Why do you even care so much? He is not your son.” Without quite knowing why, Athos brushes his thumb over Aramis’ cheekbone. He pulls his hand back and rolls off Aramis. “Even if you begot him, he is not. Being a father is more than getting a woman pregnant. Who knows how many of your bastards are out there. You never tried to find out if there are any. You never tried to be a father.”

Aramis makes no attempt to hold him back. “Because I can’t have him,” he says quietly. “No, Athos, save your breath.” He shakes his head and presses his hand to his ribs, to the spot under his heart where Athos knows he had hit him before. “You are right, I know that. In my heart I know. I don’t want to be a father, I want to-”

“What?”

“Crave.”

Athos closes his eyes and breathes in and out very slowly. “And then what?”

“And then I won’t get what I want. And that-” he stares past Athos, and a shiver runs down Athos’ spine as he pictures the demons that have caught Aramis’ attention. “That is what I want,” he concludes helplessly. Suddenly, he grabs Athos’ arm and pulls him close. “I am doomed, Athos,” he whispers in a voice that is not his own. “I told you so. I am doomed to seek… to wander and never to reach the Promised Land.”

There is nothing Athos can say in reply. There is a wonderful, an awful sense to what Aramis is saying, and Athos understands his meaning. It fills him with awe and with fear, this moment of clarity, of honesty. Aramis never speaks of these things, not unless he has been rendered peaceful and pliant by Athos’ blows. He reaches out instead and presses his hand to the side of Aramis’ face, cradling the bruise under his palm, and he thinks of the hunger that devours Aramis’ soul. How, like Tantalus in Hades, he suffers eternal punishment for giving in to temptation.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title taken from Goethe's _Faust_ , which is all about temptation.
> 
> 2\. I put in a very obvious literary reference. I hope you enjoy it, gentle readers.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Spirit that Denies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7692856) by [The_Ghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Ghoul/pseuds/The_Ghoul)




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